Good morning from Dieline’s editor-in-chief, Bill McCool. Here’s your daily side serving of design news, short musings, brand stuff, and forgotten ephemera.
Getty Images went bankrupt! Hell of a time to be in the business of stock photography.
OK, but what if the “culture” you’re creating isn’t very good? Maybe some of us don’t want Allstate, Ford, and Visa to “break into Hollywood” because that’s not what we define as “culture.” You’re just creating a more expensive version of branded content. We really need to have an intervention with all the marketing people and discuss what constitutes “culture.”
Le Puzz made a Hanukkah puzzle with a Matzoh ball Jell-O mold, and I’m in love. Get me this puzzle!
Rudy rounded up some of his favorite Halloween 2026 designs, and I only want to add that candy corn is delicious, and I will not abide the slander over this shellac’d morsel of high fructose corn syrup.
Starbucks Red Cup Day returns on November 16th, but in the meantime, the coffee chain has unveiled its holiday merchandise plans, which include a “surprise collection” of “mystery glass Bearista” cups. Everyone loves a blind box, even the kid-dults.
Day Job did the branding for Lance Oppenheim’s production company, To Be Formed. Speaking of which, I wrote about You Can See Everything last week.
The Puente Hills Mall is not actually Back to the Future’s Twin Pines Mall, and has been largely vacant in recent years. That may no longer be the case, as it might be turned into a data center. Incidentally, this would be a 10-megawatt data center, which still wouldn’t be enough power to make time travel possible, as the flux capacitor requires 1.21 gigawatts to work its magic.
Clean Cult just released a line of castile soaps. Pretty groovy looking, maaaaaaaan.
Say less, Marissa!
Anthropic has a proposed Public Benefit Fund. Elon Musk will supposedly give every child in America a share in SpaceX. The Dells have kicked some cash into the Trump accounts. What does it all mean? Welp, the extremely wealthy are trying to “curry favor” with the public and do a little image rehab, given that the uber-wealthy currently have us in a vice grip. Anywho, I disagree with the close of this FastCo piece covering this. Empty (and PR-forced) generosity is not a “positive force” and is very much worthy of cynicism. But especially after the Doge disaster.
-Bill